


B’s New Vamp

by Mia_writes



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, One Shot, POV Outsider, Season/Series 07, Spuffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 15:15:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14876192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mia_writes/pseuds/Mia_writes
Summary: Just a short little piece. Faith's POV on Season 7, especially concerning what’s going on between Spike and Buffy.





	B’s New Vamp

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in late season 7 (after Faith arrives) but not during any particular episode. It mentions a few things that aren't canon but that could have happened off-screen or between episodes. I hope you like it!
> 
> Disclaimer: Sunnydale and its Scoobies belong to Joss Whedon and the other creators of Buffy. I own nothing.

Here’s the thing: it confuses the hell out of me, too. So maybe I ain’t the best person to explain it. But I gotta. It’s like this itch, just underneath my skin and I’ve gotta get it out. Cause I ain’t ever had what Buffy’s got— and believe me I’ve tried. 

It’s hard to see if you don’t know her. It’s not the kinda thing the Potentials could pick up on, even if they bothered to look at her as more than an oppressor-leader-type. It’s not the kind of thing that weird guy— Andrew, I think— could pick up on with his video camera or talk about in his fantasy fairytales. Cause it isn’t a fairytale—it isn’t nice and neat and pretty and happily ever after. 

Us Slayers don’t get happily ever afters. 

Maybe that’s why I get it when they don’t. 

The Scoobies could probably get it if they weren’t so busy. They’re a team, sure, but they each revolve in their separate little worlds. They fight together, and they live together, and one day I think they’ll die together—hey, that’s just the way it is— but they’re not… together. 

Xander’s so busy trying to keep everything whole—the window, the morale, his relationship with that ex-demon— that he’s stopped trying to keep his little group whole by actually spending time with his friends. Willow is so busy with her magic rehab and her new girlfriend—when did that happen?—that she doesn’t have time to watch out for Buffy’s feelings like she used to. I mean, damn, I used to have to pry the girl away from her friends. We had our own special little thing, our own connection cause we were Slayers: a living-wild-but-doomed-to-die thing, and that made her stick with me, watch my back. But back then she was glued to the people whose eyes she doesn’t meet anymore. 

It’s different with her sis too. Dawn isn’t a kid anymore, and she’s decent with a sword and Buffy doesn’t know if she should treat her like a baby or an adult. So she ignores her and babies her all at the same time and I think she’s giving the poor girl whiplash. She needs to lay back, let the girl do what she wants. We weren’t much older when we were out on the streets or down in the sewers battling whatever nasties this stupid town threw at us. But I think Buffy can’t find any middle ground, the way I couldn’t back when I was here the first time and I couldn’t find a foothold in her perfect little black-and-white world. 

I fit in just fine now. 

Giles and Buffy aren’t even speaking, and no one will tell me why. There are rumors— if the potentials could fight half as well as they can gossip we’d be done and packing by now. Some of them say that he tried to take over, play general, but I don’t think he would. He was always happy to let her call the big shots before. Some of them say that they got into a fight cause of some portal thing I don’t understand. And some of them say they’re fighting over Spike. 

That one I get. 

I’d be pretty damn worried too, if I was her Watcher and I was watching her throw it all to hell. If I didn’t see the things I do see, the things that tell me that maybe she has a better plan than that. He’s worried cause Spike’s a recent killer who can get a girl—a Slayer—to take some government leash outta his head. But Spike told me he got over it, the evil, and I believe him. I’m over it too, mostly. 

That’s another thing Giles doesn’t get: how seductive the darkness is. It called to me and I fell to it and my hat is never gonna be pure white again. 

Neither is hers. 

She chose to get it dirty. She’s hard, and she’s ruthless, and she scares the shit out of the Potentials. But they gotta be scared. And she’s gotta do the scaring. Thing is, her hat was dirty long before this. It was dirty the first time she laid hands on Angel. 

She just liked to pretend it wasn’t. 

God, that self-righteousness. I used to hate it. And now she doesn’t try to pretend that she’s all-knowing and all-pure and I actually kinda miss the old her. 

But the Slayerness of her is killing her and I get it, and he gets it, and I think we might be the only two people on the planet who understand. 

I see it. I get how they work. 

She trusts him, crazy as that seems. The others don’t exactly flinch away from him, but it’s different when she doesn’t. When she gets into a fight with some fledges and she doesn’t bother turning around to make sure he’s got her back—she used to do that with me, the whole checking to see if I was backing her up thing, and I didn’t know how much she doubted me, even then, until I saw her with him now. We used to move in sync, me and her, Slayers against the world, and I don’t think anyone can have the connection we had before it all went to hell in a really crappy hand basket. But she and Spike come pretty damn close. 

Maybe they have it better than we did. Even though the two of us were Slayers and they’re Slayer and vampire and they should be mortal enemies but they’re not. 

There’s another thing too: when the fighting’s done and the wounded are getting up off the ground, she looks for him first—and he looks for her. The second their eyes meet they both look away like naughty school kids caught with their pants down and skirts up in an abandoned classroom. But they look, and they only look when they think nobody’s looking. Like they’re scared of the look their looks will bring. 

Okay, look, I’ll stop beating around the bush. They’re in love and I think I’m the only one who sees it. It’s so damn obvious. 

It’s in the way his mug of blood is the first thing in the microwave each morning, long before he’s out of the basement and able to appreciate how many girls she has to tear through to get it there. It’s in the way she looks to him when she’s calling the shots, out of the corner of her eyes like she wants to ask his approval but she can’t. It’s in the way he helps her train the girls even though he thinks it’s useless—and it’s in the way he doesn’t tell her that. It’s the way he slips up and watches her when he shouldn’t be looking. It’s the way she never smiles anymore, but sometimes when he’s around she does this little half-exhale thing that a generous person might call a laugh. It’s the way his fingers close easily around one of her stakes, like he’s been doing this forever. It’s the way she doesn’t flinch when he vamps next to her, the way he growls at everyone who doubts her, the way she doesn’t need to turn around to know he’s entered the room, the way he watches her sister even though she glares at him like she wants to shove a stake into his heart. 

There’s the darker sides too. It’s the way I caught them fighting the other day, across Sunnydale where the Potentials wouldn’t see, screaming and struggling and not holding back any punches. It’s the way he threw her against a building and she just screamed and clocked his nose instead of reaching for the stake tucked into the waistband of her jeans. It’s the way that, when she finally did whip out her stake, he just laughed like he knew she wouldn’t hurt him. It’s the way she didn’t—hurt him, that is. It’s the way he bandaged the wounds he himself had inflicted, later, before they came home. It’s the way they sparred for the Potentials, like it was choreographed instead of a fight, blocking each other’s blows with hardly half a thought. Like they knew where the other person would strike before the other one knew themselves. It’s the way when he finally pinned her down in the sparring match, and she stiffened all over, he leapt off of her, made a few quick excuses, and headed home. It’s the way she, not even thirty seconds later, made the same lame excuses and took off after him. 

It’s the way his hand brushed hers the other day, and lingered. 

It’s the way he hugged her yesterday, with his face pressed tightly against her neck like he was trying to memorize her scent, and she didn’t say a word about the vampire at her throat. 

It’s the way she gravitates towards him sometimes, like she doesn’t notice she’s moving until she’s beside him and has to make up some excuse for crossing the room. 

They just work.

Because she’s unstuck, drifting, and he anchors her. 

Because she’s fighting a losing battle and he puts hope in her eyes. 

Because her world is all messy gray now, but she’s not spiraling the way I once was… because she’s got him to help her.

Damn Buffy. Damn her to hell. Her world may be a whole hell of a lot more messed up now but she still has something I can’t even dream of. 

Acceptance. Someone who will look into her eyes and see the mess she’s trying to hide from all of us and smile back because he doesn’t care that she’s got sins. 

I’ve got sins too. Mountains of them. More than Buffy will ever have. 

And there’s no one here to love me like he loves her.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated.


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